Tutorial: Lemongrass & Coconut Milk Soap Recipe

Soapers who make vegan friendly handmade soap often get a little stuck in their soapmaking. Without additives like honey, milk, or silk, it can be a little trying to get a nice creamy addition to a recipe.

Even though animal milks are off the table, plant milks aren’t!

Enter Coconut Milk!! Coconut milk makes incredibly creamy and silky vegan soap, and is one of my favorite water replacement additives. Time for a…

Lemongrass and Coconut Milk Soap Recipe

I was a little inspired by thai food in this tutorial, and chose to use lemongrass, ginger, and coconut milk as the main components.

Colorants Used

PREP WORK: Weigh out all your ingredients. Mix up your lye solution. I add my coconut milk (or other alternative liquids) to my oils directly and use a 50% lye solution with sodium hydroxide and distilled water. This helps prevent any color changes or burning of sugars in alternative liquids.

A note on coconut milk: Not all brands of coconut milk are created equal! Try to snag one that has little to no additional ingredients. It’s hard to find one without a thickener (like guar gum), but some also include preservatives, emulsifiers, and more. As a general rule of thumb, the more additives in the coconut milk, the more likely you are to run into acceleration.

Once you are ready to get to work, bring your soaping oils, coconut milk, and lye solution to an emulsified state (not quite trace).

Measure out the coconut milkAdd the coconut milk to the soaping oilsAdd the concentrated lye solution to the oil + coconut milk mixStickblend until emulsified

ADD A DASH OF COLOR: I chose dill as a natural colorant for this soap because of it’s shape. It’s like miniaturized lemongrass (visually and that’s all!)

I poured a quarter of my raw soap into a separate container and colored it with wheatgrass powder. Wheatgrass is a lovely muted green. However, it does fade over time to a very muted sage brown.

Add the cut and dried dill to the lemongrass + coconut milk soapPour of quarter of the batch into a separate container for coloringStir the wheatgrass powder into the separated soap portion

SWIRL IT: I’m using an in-the-mold swirl on this batch (ITMS).

It starts off by pouring half of the main raw soap into the mold. Next, I randomly pour the wheatgrass colored portion in the mold. And then top it off with the remainder of the main batch. I pour from a moderate height to encourage the pour to break through the layers of raw soap in the mold.

As you can tell by the photos, the soap was thickening rapidly due to the coconut milk. (The ginger essential oil also contributes to this!) This is why it’s important to initially mix to an emulsified state rather than trace. And any further mixing is done with a spatula.

Pour half the main pot of soap into the moldPour wheatgrass colored soap into the moldTop off the lemongrass + coconut milk soap with the remainder of the raw soap

THE FINISH LINE: Once it’s all in the mold, it’s time to pretty it up. I textured the tops by dragging the corner of my spatula from the outside of the mold towards the middle on both sides. I finished it up by sprinkling a little wheatgrass powder over the top.

Once you are all done, insulate your soap. Unmold after 12 to 24 hours. Cut and cure!

Texture the top of the lemongrass + coconut milk soap before putting it to bedCured Lemongrass + Coconut Milk Soap

The lemongrass and coconut milk soap recipe featured in this tutorial is a Modern Soapmaking original. It is palm-free & vegan friendly. It uses a 7% superfat and a 33% lye solution strength. Feel free to adjust as necessary!

Get the lemongrass and coconut milk soap recipe formatted for print, with approximate ingredient costs and appropriate INCI listings by downloading the recipe below:

Hey-ho, I'm the soapy founder of Modern Soapmaking, and I eat, breathe, and sleep soap. (Okay, I don't eat soap... that's gross.) My passion is in helping other soapmakers find their path, whether it's in the craft or as an entrepreneur. Maybe, I can help you find yours?

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Reader Interactions

What Folks Are Saying

I made coconut milk soap yesterday. I got frustrated trying to find a pre-made coconut milk that didn’t have a bunch of additives so I made my own with distilled water and unsweetened coconut flakes in the blender. I strained out the solid bits and it worked great in my soap!

Even if you have to heat oils or butters if they are solid, it doesn’t change the fact that you are making cold process soap. With hot process soap, you make it in the same manner as cold process but you heat/cook the soap batter to force it to the gel phase.

Hey, Gloria,
Alternative liquid (any non-water liquid) soap making is an advanced technique. We suggest early batches be made without scent, color, other additives, or alternative liquids. Once you have a feel for what trace, gel, and saponification look like, you will be able to troubleshoot and move on to more advanced techniques.

It sounds like your soap overheated, a common problem with alternative liquids. If you notice a batch volcanoing you can:
-Use gloved hands and a spatula to smash it back down.
-Remove any insulation.
-Elevate the mold, if possible.

Coconut milk is one of my favorite additives, and usually the only milk I use in my soap batches (besides the occassional bit of cream). Even though I am not a vegan soaper (silk!), I prefer it to animal milks. Your soap looks lovely 🙂

The coconut milk is part of the “water” total, even though it is added to the oils to prevent color change. The water in any formula is the carrier for the lye, and the strongest lye solution that can be used is a 50% solution (versus the 28% that most lye calculators use.) The water and lye in this formula equates a 50% solution, with the addition of coconut milk, it becomes a 33% solution.

The stronger the solution in a formula, the shorter the cure time because there are less liquids to evaporate in the final bar.

I’m too nervous to write a recipe without using soapcalc. I like the idea of a shorter curing time though. Is it okay to just reduce the amount of water to match the amount of lye recommended by the calculator? Will that give a hugely accelerated trace?

If you use the same amount of water as your lye, it will give you a 50% solution. Any water discounts will accelerate trace, especially a 50% solution. You can change the solution strength by using Soap Calc on any recipe. This particular recipe uses both coconut milk and water for the entire water portion, it’s just split between phases.

Wow, quick answer :). Thanks Kenna – I made a coconut milk soap recently using coconut water with the lye and coconut milk with the oils. It accelerated like the proverbial speeding bullet and I had to jam it into a mould cursing and swearing (me, not the soap…). It turned out, predictably, with air pockets and also clear veins that I think are glycerine? It actually feels like it will be a nice soap though. Just not pretty.

I don’t tend to deal with acceleration too much, but I soap at room temperature which helps a lot. I also barely use a stickblender, a lot of soapmakers tend to overdo it with their SBs. As you can see in the photos, even at room temp there was mild acceleration. 🙂 Good luck!

Instead of 50% lye solution, can we freeze coconut milk and then add it to lye so that it wont change its color like how we use to do it for any milk soap recipe. In that case can we use 100% coconut milk instead of 50%?

Hello, I am a soaper from Holland and there is no recipe for milk soaps here what so ever! I really want to make a coconutmilk soap but everywhere i look there are only ounces, if i convert it i do not trust it so much. Could you help me with a recipe in grams? And Castoroil is not availeble here so what other oil could i use for that?

If you input the amounts into SoapCalc’s lye calculator in ounces it will show you the percentage. You can then enter these amounts to the calculator and it will tell you what you need in grams. I’m sure there’s an easier way but this is how I did it. I live in France and have ordered a lot of my supplies on eBay. I’ve only just started making soap so I haven’t yet located any suppliers in the area I’m in. Will have to if I plan to sell in the future.

I use grams for soap making. They’re more accurate when weighing than ounces. I enter the oil amounts into Soapcalc in percentages and the soap weight in grams, just as Paula says. When you click calculate and print, the resulting PDF file will show pounds, ounces, and grams (maybe kilos too). I often highlight the values I’m using, especially with a new recipe) so that I don’t get confused. I round _down_ to the nearest gram on the lye amount and _up_ to the nearest gram on oil/butters and write down the actual rounded and weighed amount next to the Soapcalc weight. Have never had a lye heavy soap this way.

hi kenna. Made yr soap last nite it’s gorgeous and smells wicked. The colour of yr soap in yr pics seem more lighter then my mine just wondering once it cured would mine get lighter. Also can I substitute butter milk for coconut milk Sorry for a silly question as I am a first time soaper and loving it. Thank u in advance.

Your specific oils, coconut milk, and essential oils can cause the color to vary slightly – this is normal. 🙂 This soap didn’t discolor or change from the photos over time, but there’s always a range of resulting colors when working with soap.

You could substitute buttermilk or other milks for the coconut milk, if you wish. 🙂

You don’t have a problem with discoloration or rancid smells with the coconut milk? I always freeze my goats milk into a slurry at the least before adding my lye to it slowly making sure to keep it cool while doing it. This doesn’t have that problem? Do you insulate it when you’ve gotten it into the mold or do you keep it cool?

You can substitute any oils but always make sure to always run it through a lye calculator. Different oils and butters have different SAP values. For example, many substitute Rice Bran Oil for Olive Oil because their SAP values are nearly the same. If you don’t run any changes through a lye calculator, you can wind up with a not so nice outcome.

Hi, I’m really wanting to make soap but I’m confused on your recipe, your soap formula doesn’t say anything about lye in there. Does that formula make lye or do I have to buy lye?
Sorry it might be a stupid question but like I said I have never done this before!

Marie. Sodium hydroxide is lye. Holly. I’ve found if you read through all the comments, many of your questions will be addressed. Kenna stated, and typically soaps cool unless noted specifically.
Kenna, while I didn’t use this recipe, I used the 50:50 split method. Initially, everything looked great, though my base was darker than I’d have liked. However, it darkened considerably over the following week. More importantly, it developed some random white spots. Not a lot, and while they didn’t zap, they felt sharp. Could this be lye? As a note, I did put in fridge for 24 hours as I was worried about coconut milk burning, & I thought preventing gel would avoid this. Is my soap safe? Should I buy ph strips?
Thank you so much for sharing your info!

The random white spots could be stearic spots, which is what happens when the oils get too cool before saponfiying and fractionate (the heavier fatty acids settle out.) If they didn’t zap, I would assume that’s what they are. If you dig one out of your soap and rub it between your (gloved) fingers, it will feel like a waxy bead. Without seeing the bar myself, it’s hard to be sure. Yes, please, invest in high pH range strips or a pH meter!

Mine stayed the same color as the photo, but different batches of oils, milks, and other ingredients will change the final color of any soap.

I tend to soap around 85 degrees & depending on my recipe, occasionally get the stearic spots as well. If I’ve let my oils get too cool, I can sometimes see the oils fractionate out. I put my oils in the microwave & heat just long enough to get everything blended back together (usually a matter of seconds). That seems to have helped to reduce the spots.

Hi! I am looking to use this recipe for my other batches, I truly love how moisturizing this soap came out. I want to try doing 48 ounces, I put this recipe in a lye calculator and the lye and water amounts were different than what you provided, so I am not sure how to recalculate this recipe for 48 ounces. Can you help?

Also, I want to color using activated charcoal and rose clay, how to you recommend that incorporate these into my soap? Dissolve in 1 tablespoon of aloe vera juice for each colorant and then deduct 2 tablespoons of water from the recipe?

This recipe uses partial water replacement, where the coconut milk and water are added together for the total water amount. You would simply resize the formula, and then split the water amount in half for each (coconut milk and water). More information about lye solutions can be found here: http://www.modernsoapmaking.com/lye-solution-in-soapmaking/

When using the coconut milk have you ever had problems with the milk scorching. I made a batch of soap with the coconut milk and it looked great when I poured it into the mold, but when I took it out 24 hours later it had a very bad smell to it. what do you do to prevent this. I have read that putting it in the frig. for the 24 hours that it hardens helps. I really want to start using Coconut milk in my soaps but don’t want to ruin any batches of soap.
I plan on trying this recipe for lemongrass and coconut milk soap this weekend. It looks great.

The method of water replacement I use does not tend to scorch milks, which is why I use it. (Adding it to the oils rather than the lye solution). I do not recommend refrigerating soap, as it can throw saponification out of whack and create issues like separation. Milks do tend to have a funky smell straight out of the mold, but they go away during cure.

Hi Kenna,
Thanks for the recipe! I tried this yesterday with some friends and got an interesting result. All of our soap boxes are leaking slightly. I used the same lining technique that I have used in the past and the same box so I don’t think that could be it. The changes that I made were 1) I tripled the recipe for 3 boxes instead of one, 2) I substituted sunflower oil for avocado oil 3) I replaced 0.5 oz of the coconut milk with water since I only had a 13.5 oz can (so 1.5oz water substitution total). The coconut milk that I used did not have any of the ‘gum’ preservatives but it did have an extra ingredient or two that I can’t remember. Anyway, my soap may still be salvageable but any insight into why the leaking has occurred would be great.

Hello, Kenna. Beautiful soap :-). I recently tried coconut cream. I wasn’t sure how to go about it so I treated it like a normal cream (according to Anne L. Watson) – I diluted it with water 1:1 and chucked into the freezer. My first batch was a success – smooth, light color. No discoloration or seizeing. My second batch – total disaster! Soap on the stick. I blame it on different fragrance oil. But I will be trying again :-)!

Being I’ve never worked with “milk” Would it be easier to
freeze coconut milk and 50% of lye to the 50% of water solution I’m substituting for water?
Example if there is 10 0z of water
5 oz water
5 oz coconut milk
add 4.9 oz to 5 oz of water,
add milk to melted oils,
saponify?
Sorry this is a little confusing lol
Karen

Thanks for this recipe – I just wanted to ask – with this being superfatted at 7%, is there any need to add in any preservative? I guess that since you don’t mention it there is no need but as I am new to soap making could you explain to me what circumstances necessitate adding preservatives to prevent rancidity?

There is no need for a preservative in this soap recipe. Most preservatives would not be able to survive the saponification process and high pH of soap. As long as the soap is formulated properly, it does not need one.

Hello, How do i get the essential oil smell to stick around? I made a castile soap for my first ever bar with olive oil and coconut oil. I added the peppermint essential oil at trace but after 24 hours the smell was gone. Thanks

love everything about this soap, can I use homemade Coconut Milk ?
One more thing when you say 50% lye solution, you mean 1:1 that is 4.9 ounces Sodium Hydroxide 5 ounces Distilled Water 5 ounces Coconut Milk? right?

Hi Kenna,
I’m quite a newbie to soapmaking, so I hope my question doesn’t sound too silly.
I’m just wondering if I can add lavender essential oil to this recipe… will it be a weird combination? If it won’t, how much should I use? I don’t want to use dill/wheatgrass, but I have some dried lavender buds that I can use to decorate the soap.
Look forward to hearing your answer! I love to experiment with things, but I don’t want to ruin this wonderful recipe. Thank you so much in advance 🙂

I was also wondering about subbing out the dill and wheatgrass for lemongrass that I grind up in my coffee grinder (specifically for my herbs/seeds). I’ve used it to decorate the tops of my soaps but never put it in the soap batter. I wonder what color it will turn or if it will just be soecieled. I thought it would be nice to add with the Lemongrass and Ginger EO. Thank you for any input.

Love the whole Thai theme as that’s the brand Coconut Milk I use too. As I scrolled thru & saw the Ginger EO combined with the Coconut Milk, I was thinking, oh boy, should I even plug in my stick blender. I do tend go easy on the blender (3-5 seconds max at a time). Have never gelled my milk soaps, but this one looks (and smells) too good not to give it a try. Guess what kind of take out food I’m going to be having for dinner 😊

I am in the middle of the Formulating Workshop but won’t be able to finish it until tomorrow but want to make this soap this afternoon. Was the lye calculated with the milk for a faster curing time? I know I should know this from the workshop but my mind is a little numb from all the info right now and I want to get this in the mold…

I use partial water replacement rather than full water replacement like most soapmakers because it makes it more manageable (doesn’t tend to overheat, discolor as much, and easier to remember everything). So, the milk is “part of” the water amount for those reasons. 🙂

Hi
I do not understand “a 50% lye solution with sodium hydroxide and distilled water” works like. Do you use just 50% of distilled water and 100% hydroxide from calculator results? It is because the other 50% comes from coconut milk, Isn`t?
Thanks for your feedback
Regards

Hi, I love your site and information available here. Now, for the costs estimates you post, the essential oil costs seem to be very low to current market prices even when buying from wholesale suppliers.
Can you elaborate on this point, I would love to know where you can purchase these products at the price you indicate.
Thanks again for your work!!!

Thanks for visiting! 🙂 We purchase all of our ingredients in bulk, which drastically reduces the cost involved. For instance, we buy essential oils by the pound or keg (5 lbs or 25 lbs). When doing so, you can cut your costs by anywhere from 20% to 70% in comparison to smaller sizes. It’s also important to note that ingredient prices fluctuate because they are natural products reliant on crop yields. You can find a list of essential oil suppliers over here so you can shop and compare, too: https://www.modernsoapmaking.com/where-to-buy-essential-oils-for-soapmaking/

Hi Kenna,
I have been making coconut milk soap by mixing coconut milk in water before mixing with lye. However, it always create white bits after i mix with lye and they stays after I mix with the oil. I would like to create a smooth coconut milk soap like your recipe.

But I don’t quite get the proportion between water, coconut milk and lye.
Does that mean I mix the measured sodium hydroxide into 50% of the liquid, in this case water.
Then the other 50% liquid which is supposed to be mix with the sodium hydroxide will now be coconut milk and will be mixed in the oil solution (after above lye is added into the oil)?

With above mixing method, will the lye react with the coconut milk? As all the liquids are mixed together?

Hey, Crystal,
As noted in the prep work section: “I add my coconut milk (or other alternative liquids) to my oils directly and use a 50% lye solution with sodium hydroxide and distilled water. This helps prevent any color changes or burning of sugars in alternative liquids.”

So, the milk is added to the base oils before the strong lye solution (lye and water mix) is added to the base oils. The base oils provide a buffer between the coconut milk and lye, dampering the reaction when the lye is introduced. The lye will still react with the milk, saponifying any fat in it, but the milk shouldn’t overheat like it would if you added lye directly to it.

Thanks for your reply.
So 50% lye solution meaning:
the full measured sodium hydroxide in the recipe + 50% of the total liquid?
Then the 50% of the other liquid, which in this case will be the coconut milk will be added to the base oil before adding the above lye solution?

Hi! This looks like an awesome soap recipe! I’d like to sub apricot kernel oil for the avocado, but how do you run this through a lye calculator? Do you look at the grams of fat given on the nutrition panel on the can and include that in your total weight of coconut oil? Or can I just ignore the fats that come with the coconut milk and assume that it will just increase my superfat by some unknown amount?
Thanks!

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